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Rh the tactics of Europe through their intercourse with the Dutch, it is remarkable that the changes attributed to Takeda and Uyesugi were not more drastic. Speaking broadly, what they did was to organize a column with the musqueteers and archers in front; the spearmen and swordsmen in the second line; the cavalry in the third line; the commanding officer in the rear, and the drums and standards in the centre. At close quarters the spear proved a highly effective weapon, and in the days of Hideyoshi (1536–1598) combined flank and front attacks by bands of spearmen became a favourite device. The importance of a strong reserve also received recognition, and in theory, at all events, a tolerably intelligent system of tactics was adopted. But not until the close of the 17th century did the doctrine of strictly disciplined action obtain practical vogue. Yamaga Soko is said to have been the successful inculcator of this principle, and from his time the most approved tactical formation was known as the Yamagaryū (Yamaga style), though it showed no other innovation than strict subordination of each unit to the general plan.

Although, tactically speaking, the samurai was everything and the system nothing before the second half of the 17th century, and although strategy was chiefly a matter of deception, surprises and ambushes, it must not be supposed that there were no classical principles. The student

of European military history searches in vain for the rules and maxims of war so often invoked by glib critics, but the student of Japanese history is more successful. Here, as in virtually every field of things Japanese, retrospect discovers the ubiquitous Chinaman. The treatises of Sung and ’Ng (called in Japan Son and Go) Chinese generals of the third century after Christ, were the classics of Far-Eastern captains through all generations. (See The Book of War, tr. E. F. Calthrop, 1908.) Yoshitsunē, in the 12th century, deceived a loving girl to obtain a copy of Sung’s work which her father had in his possession, and Yamaga, in the 17th century, when he set himself to compose a book on tactics, derived his materials almost entirely from the two Chinese monographs. These treatises came into the hands of the Japanese in the 8th century, when the celebrated Kibi no Mabi went to study civilization in China, just as his successors of the 19th century went to study a new civilization in Europe and America. Thenceforth Son and Go became household words among Japanese soldiers. Their volumes were to the samurai what the Mahayana was to the Buddhist. They were believed to have collected whatever of good had preceded them, and to have forecast whatever of good the future might produce. The character of their strategic methods, somewhat analogous to those of 18th-century Europe, may be gathered from the following:—

Such precepts are multiplied; but when these ancient authors discuss tactical formations, they do not seem to have contemplated anything like rapid, well-ordered changes of mobile, highly trained masses of men from one formation to another, or their quick transfer from point to point of a battlefield. The basis of their tactics is The Book of Changes. Here again is encountered the superstition that underlies nearly all Chinese and Japanese institutions: the superstition that took captive even the great mind of Confucius. The positive and the negative principles; the sympathetic and the antipathetic elements; cosmos growing out of chaos; chaos re-absorbing cosmos—on such fancies they founded their tactical system. The result was a phalanx of complicated organization, difficult to manœuvre and liable to be easily thrown into confusion. Yet when Yamaga in the 17th century interpreted these ancient Chinese treatises, he detected in them suggestions for a very shrewd use of the principle of échelon, and applied it to devise formations which combined much of the frontal expansion of the line with the solidity of the column. More than that cannot be said for Japanese tactical genius. The samurai was the best fighting unit in the Orient—probably one of the best fighting units the world ever produced. It was perhaps because of that excellence that his captains remained indifferent tacticians.

In estimating the military capacity of the Japanese, it is essential to know something of the ethical code of the samurai, the bushido (way of the warrior) as it was called. A typical example of the rules of conduct prescribed by feudal chieftains is furnished in the code of Kato

Kiyomasa, a celebrated general of the 16th century:—

The plainly paramount purpose of these rules was to draw a sharp line of demarcation between the samurai and the courtiers living in Kiōto. The dancing, the couplet-composing, the sumptuous living and the fine costumes of the officials frequenting the imperial capital were strictly interdicted by the feudatories. Frugality, fealty and filial piety—these may be called the fundamental virtues of the samurai. Owing to the circumstances out of which his caste had grown, he regarded all bread-winning pursuits with contempt, and despised money. To be swayed in the smallest degree by mercenary motives was despicable in his eyes. Essentially a stoic, he made self-control the ideal of his existence, and practised the courageous endurance of suffering so thoroughly that he could without hesitation inflict on his own body pain of the most horrible description. Nor can the courage of the samurai justly be ascribed to bluntness of moral sensibility resulting from semi-savage conditions of life. From the 8th century onwards the current of existence in Japan set with general steadiness in the direction of artistic refinement and voluptuous luxury, amidst which men could scarcely fail to acquire habits and tastes inconsistent with acts of high courage and great endurance. The samurai’s mood was not a product of semi-barbarism, but rather a protest against emasculating civilization. He schooled himself to regard death by his own hand as a normal eventuality. The story of other nations shows